Top 2014 Market, Trading & Investing Books

Every year we present to our readers a list of favorite and important books that our analysts, traders and editors have read. These new as well as top books could help you trade and invest as good as many business legends. This year we will also feature a few trading systems development and testing books. Algorithmic trading is as important as always and more participants understand that a combination of systematic rules based approach combined with fundamental analysis is the best way to beat the markets.

What makes a successful CEO? Most people call to mind a familiar definition: “a seasoned manager with deep industry expertise.” Drawing on years of research and experience, Thorndike tells eye-opening stories, extracting lessons and revealing a compelling alternative model for anyone interested in leading a company or investing in one—and reaping extraordinary returns.

The days of rapid economic growth in China are over. Mounting debt and rising internal distortions mean that rebalancing is inevitable. Beijing has no choice but to take significant steps to restructure its economy. The only question is how to proceed. Michael Pettis debunks the lingering bullish expectations for China’s economic rise and details Beijing’s options. The urgent task of shifting toward greater domestic consumption will come with political costs, but Beijing must increase household income and reduce its reliance on investment to avoid a fall.

For years, traders and investors have been using unproven assumptions about popular patterns such as breakouts, momentum, new highs, new lows, market breadth, put/call ratios and more without knowing if there is a statistical edge. This book offers a comprehensive look back at the way the markets have acted over the last two decades. The book shows that nothing has changed, that the markets behave the same way today as they have in years past, and that understanding this puts you in a prime position to profit.

What can the ancient world teach us about modern money markets? How can we use examples from the ancient world, philosophers and writers to better understand the markets? Just as historians such as Herodotus living in ancient Greece examined the past, can traders look to their past to learn something new? In this exciting new book, Saeed Amen looks to the ancient world to help us better understand modern money markets, demonstrating what ancient philosophers can teach us about trading markets today, and showing readers how to maximize their returns.

After examining more than two hundred years of data across dozens of markets and asset classes, the conclusion is clear: Momentum continually outperforms. However, most mainstream investors haven’t had a way to fully discover and implement the benefits of momentum investing . . . until now! Based on the award-winning work of Gary Antonacci, an expert in modern portfolio theory and optimization, this groundbreaking guide presents an easy-to-understand, straightforward model that transforms momentum concepts into an actionable investing strategy called Global Equity Momentum (GEM). By combining relative-strength momentum and absolute momentum, this proven methodology lets you take advantage of intramarket trends while avoiding large drawdowns.

In his well-received first book Quantitative Trading, Dr. Ernest Chan addressed the essential techniques an algorithmic trader needs to succeed at this demanding endeavor. While some useful example strategies were presented throughout, they were not the main focus of the book. With this in mind, Dr. Chan has created a practical guide to algorithmic trading strategies that can be readily implemented by both retail and institutional traders alike. More than an academic treatise on financial theory, Algorithmic Trading is an accessible resource that blends some of the most useful financial research done in the last few decades with valuable insights Dr. Chan has gained from actually exploiting some of those theories in live trading.